


Promises Promises

by alyciasjay (sylvanuniverses)



Category: Atypical (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Coming Out, F/F, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, minor casey/evan in the beginning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 00:41:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15961025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylvanuniverses/pseuds/alyciasjay
Summary: What happens when a girl loses her best friend? Her new go to person? How can Casey come to terms with losing someone she bonded with so quickly and so easily? Casey's doubts just grow as her birthday grows worse for her until a rather unexpected ending.orCasey is struggling to keep it together without having someone to just listen to her. Someone who makes her feel heard, especially after losing Izzie.





	1. Murphy's Law

**Author's Note:**

> This first chapter is going to be following very closely to s2e9 and 10. The first chapter will be covering Casey, whereas the next will delve into feelings of the ever put together track captain, Izzie. Please beware, I wrote this right after I finished season 2 and decided that this was more necessary than sleep. be gentle.... OH and! I do not own any rights to the characters or the show or any of the content yada yada yada....please don't sue me i heard that shit was happening sooo. Have fun.

Casey Gardener hates the fact that it is her birthday. She doesn’t want much, how could she want much? Years looking after Sam taught her that she wants very little, in truth, she wants him to be happy, she wants to run, she wants to get through her pretentious new school, and she does not want to deal with her parents bullshit. All she wants is a quiet night-- her family, her boyfriend, and her old friends with a movie playing in the background as popcorn flies. All the athlete wants is a day like any other day. 

Life is ever adherent to Murphy's Law and her birthday is far from any other day in her life. Casey supposes that a lot has been going on to make her birthday a living nightmare. When Elsa, the Dark Lord herself, decided to ruin the already tenuous balance of their family, everything went to shit. Casey contemplated everything that has happened in the short span of a few months as she got dressed in her uniform. 

The first cloudy button on her pressed button up finds itself fastened, her mother cheated on dad with some bartender for a fucking dive bar.  
Another button finds its home, she has to go the pompous school that caters to dickwads.  
Three more buttons are hurriedly secured, as time is running out if she wants to make it to her pompous school, her bully turned friend turned bully plagues her life at said school.  
Casey grabs her plaid necktie and in practiced maneuvers, she fixes a four-in-hand-knot and tightens just so. She always reminds herself to give some breathing room, lest she turns into those tight ass wads that go to her school.   
Sighing heavily, Casey bends slightly to look in her mirror and she notices dark rings that make themselves known from Sam’s tortuous birthday ritual. Casey loves Sam, to death, but honestly, she didn’t know if she could handle another 3:15 wake up time with even more “Happy Birthday”s to welcome her into another year of suck.   
“Whatever, why bother with it. Any makeup will be ruined at track” she groaned.

Internally, she cringed when she thought of track. Casey has no doubt that another practice will consist of only glares and forlorn glances from her former friend. What could she possible do? As much as she wished that Izzie would believe her, Casey knows that nothing she says will convince the track captain to talk to her again. Casey doesn’t blame her...much. She knows that all Izzie can understand is that two people told her a “truth”-- either her boyfriend kissed her new friend, or her new friend kissed her boyfriend-- and Casey story held less weight in her eyes.   
What Casey couldn’t seem to grasp though, was how Izzie so readily believed that conniving dickwad over her. Casey spent countless hours talking to Izzie about how much she absolutely hates how her mom cheated on her dad. Repeating over and over how her trust was violated, by one of people she was supposed to trust the most. To Casey, she thought Izzie would understand that she hates cheaters, she hates what her mom did to her family, she hates how cheating has affected everything and everyone around her.  
Izzie chose to ignore every moment of trust that Casey handed to her on a silver platter, for the simple fact that she knew her boyfriend longer than Casey.   
To say that the teen was upset, would be an understatement. Casey is devastated.   
Izzie was-is her new favorite person. The brunette captured Casey’s attention the second that she saw her on that overly manicured school lawn. Even after speaking mere seconds with the freckled beauty, Casey was hurt by the coldness she met on that first day. Usually, everything rolled of her back, but for some reason, this girl affected Casey more than anyone.  
Casey tries her best to talk to Evan, her boyfriend, about everything but it doesn’t feel the same. Jokes land off their target, laughs feel hollower, moments feel emptier, lonelier, and all of it is because Casey knows. She knows that no matter what she does, she won’t have her favorite person back. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

School was a shitbag, as per usual nowadays. So, perhaps Casey should be happy with that consistency in her life. On the upside, enough time has passed that Casey no longer has a lingering anxiety that the absolutely worst could happen for Sam and she won’t be there for her big brother. She knows now, that if anything, this change is a good thing. This is letting Sam have the comfortability of his routine, in his school, but without the ever present life preserver that is his sister.   
Dad is waiting by the pickup and from the look on his face, she can tell that so far, no Sam emergencies, however, he seems a bit worried.  
A crooked smile finds it way onto her face. She is going to love this, finally, the day has come for him to finally let her drive.   
This is going to be fun.

~~~~~~~~~

Their laughing and good natured ribbing doesn’t end as the get out of the car but continues till they meet Chris--sorry, Christopher-- on the porch.  
“What are you doing here buddy?”  
“They’re throwing you a surprise party. I don’t like surprises, so I’m staying out here.”  
“Yeah me too!” Casey starts to hightail it out of there when she realizes what’s happening but is stopped by the giant that is her father. Looking up she realizes she won’t win this fight and is better off just suffering through whatever shitshow Mom has planned for the day. 

~~~~~~~~~

Casey was glad to know that Murphy’s Law is well a kicking...her in the fucking face right now. Not only is Sam freaking out over the endless list of her birthday ritual that he has, but also Elsa, the she devil, has decided to invite the very people that hate her.   
‘Mending fences, yeah sure Mom. I will be sure to make a fence out of all the sticks they will pull out of their Clayton prep asses’ she thought.   
The first moment she saw Izzie walk through the door, Casey knew she was fucked. Her breathing damn near stopped, pupils blew wide open, and her heart pounded. The worst part was the utter need to go to her. All Casey wanted to do the second her eyes landed on the freckled brunette, was to hug her. Casey wanted her favorite person back.  
Instead, she ran.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Leave me alone! I don’t care about the Ickle Bickle or any of your stupid rituals! It’s not even about me! It’s just about Sam, Sam, Sam, just like everything else in my sorry-ass life.”   
Casey finally lost it. She couldn’t take how selfish some of people in her life were. Her eyes connected with the very pinnacle of what was hurting her the most. Sad brown eyes met her own and that stupidly perfect freckled face was framed just so by waves of silken tresses.   
‘Fuck.’ Casey thought. Turning she ran up the stairs without looking back. She doesn’t know how to deal with today right now. All she wants is her favorite person to talk to about it all.

She slams her door, rattling old medals that hang on her walls from her track meets. Throwing herself on her bed, as per the standard of her teen angst she must, and lets the regret and weariness settle in her bones.   
Sam didn’t deserve her lashing out at him. Granted, he was annoying as hell with the ritual, but she knows that most of the ritual is to try to show that he cares about her...and Edison.   
Casey doesn’t know how much time passes as she wallows in her own self pity party when a soft knock reverberates through her room.  
“Leave me alone, Mom or Evan!”Casey couldn’t handle either of them. Mom caused all this bullshit and Evan, while just being understanding was not going to help her right now. He made her feel like shit. As though her reactions were childish, reminding her yet again of their age difference.   
The person behind the door didn’t listen to the sad yell, needing isolation. The door opened instead.

“Hey.”

That was all she needed to say for Casey to know just who it was, to feel so much of her hurt just drop away. One word and she was sitting up and ready to just listen to the soft voice that has made her feel so at ease. One word and Casey wanted to bury her head in her former friend’s neck and hold those long brown waves in her hand, as though to anchor herself to the other girl. 

But Casey knew she couldn’t do that. So, she guarded herself and readied for more shit to be thrown at her. 

“Can I come in?” Izzie asked tentatively.  
‘Fuck,’ Casey thought, but allowed an “Okay” to escape her.  
The beautiful mixed asian girl closed the door as she spoke, “Your brother’s all jazzed up because he found this creepy little gorilla thingy.”  
Izzie’s smile could stop her heart. Somehow, Casey found words, “It’s the Ickle Bickle.”  
“Yeah. That’s what he told me.”  
That damn smile shook Casey to her core, and Izzie, unbeknownst to this just put her hands in her jacket pocket and said, “I like you guys.”  
‘Do you really?’ Casey thought, ‘You left so easily’. Casey couldn’t look at her smile anymore, couldn’t look at her favorite person and feel the rift that had grown between them.

 

“Dude, I’m sorry. About everything. I was a dick and I got jealous and I was afraid of losing someone that I love”  
Casey jumped to respond, “I would never come between you and Nate!” Casey needed Izzie to understand, she needed her favorite person to understand again.  
“Screw him!”  
‘Wait what now? Did she really just-’ Casey’s thoughts were interrupted as Izzie continued   
“No. I was afraid of losing you.”  
“Oh.”  
More like oh fuck, Casey couldn’t breathe, how could she possibly begin to breathe, when finally her favorite person was back. Her favorite person is finally back.  
Apparently the world wants to kill her because Casey just about had a heart attack at Izzie’s next words.  
“Before you got to Clayton, I felt so out of place. Like I couldn’t be myself. And with Nate, our lives are just sooo different”  
“Like how he’s a huge douchebag and you’re not?”  
“Yes!”  
“When we stopped talking, all I could think about was how much I miss you. I really really fucking missed you, Casey. You’re my favorite person. I just want my girl back.”  
‘Her girl, she was Izzie’s girl. Fuck.’ she thought.

They had to laugh, to break the heavy tension that fell between them, the absolutely laden with expectancy for the both of them.   
“I feel the same. I just want you back Izzie.”  
Izzie bit her lip and Casey thought she was going to fucking faint, “Let’s forehead promise to never leave each other again”  
Skeptical, but willing as ever Casey agreed, “Okay what the hell is that ?”  
Izzie got up to get closer to Casey and decided to show her.   
The long haired beauty kneeled on the bed in front of her friend and Casey adjusted to just feel herself be closer to her. The freckled sprite leaned in slightly, eyes closed, trusting.

Casey’s body was radiating heat, her heart contracted faster as the beautiful girl leaned in closer till their foreheads touched. All of Casey’s senses were tuned into Izzie. Her eyes were crossed from trying to look at each and every freckle gracing Izzie’s face. Izzie’s scent intoxicated her more than some cheap vodka hidden in a spoiled rich girl’s locker could. Casey could only hear Izzie’s breathing right in front of her, how it picked up ever so slightly. And the only thing she could feel was the soft skin pressed against her own. 

All Casey could do was smile, and enjoy every second her favorite person has to offer her in this moment.  
A small chuckle emerges from the both of them and Izzie’s eyes open, golden brown meeting muddled hazel.   
“That’s it...how obvious is it that just made that all up?”   
They were still connected, as though any sort of separation would ruin the absolute giddiness that both of them felt.   
Casey’s eyes wandered all over the girl’s face, taking in every mark, until finally her eyes landed on lips. Pink, full lips, that looks so soft all the Casey wants to do is feel them.   
If Casey weren’t so lost in her own need she might’ve seen Izzie’s eyes flickering down to her own lips, as though asking a silent question. Almost as if Izzie’s eyes were begging for answer to be bestowed upon her lips.   
The space between them got somehow smaller and smaller, yet the door was flung open.  
“Hey Casey!” her mom stopped short. Noticing how close the two girls were on the bed, and felt a small pang, praying that her daughter wouldn’t have to endure the pain and regret that she has.  
The magic of the moment, of their promise, of their closeness vanished in the swing of a door. 

~~~~~~~~  
Casey and Izzie made their way downstairs, thoroughly subdued from their moment being broken between them.   
On the one hand, Casey felt utterly devastated and elated. She almost kissed her favorite person but that moment thrashed. On the other had, she never felt more relieved; Casey would never forgive herself if she had cheated on Evan, and she isn’t gay.  
Right?  
‘Might as well test that theory’ Casey thought. A firm kiss was planted on Evan’s lips in a near panicked manner by the short haired brunette.  
‘Well, I like kissing him. I care about him, even love him, but I can’t have sex with him tonight. Not again. I don’t think I’m a lesbian, it was a moment. Just a moment where we got caught up in the promise’  
Evan is surprised at her forgiveness but more than willing to accommodate her after the day that she has been through.   
Casey needed to just get through the rest of her birthday. Then she could think about her favorite person. She could think about her promise to Izzie, the almost kiss, and the lack of nearly all the feelings she felt for an almost kiss than a full on kiss and thoughts of sex with her boyfriend.


	2. Sonder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter is a little bit shorter but i am hoping to pump out one that is longer for the next! I decided that we needed more Izzie background so that is the main focus of this chapter. I do not have a beta so any mistakes are mine and mine alone, many apologies. Please enjoy!

Izzie learned from life very early on--the only person that you can rely on, is yourself. At first, she thought she could rely on her parents, the people that brought her into this world, making her trust them implicitly with their love. Izzie quickly realized however, that parents are the first people to destroy you. 

Everything was perfect, or so she thought. The first time that Izzie realized that she was different was in sixth grade when her best friend kissed her on the cheek. Nothing romantic was intended by her friend, she knew that, but she couldn’t make the utter euphoria that flew through her system to stop. As she looks back on it now, the teen knows that she had a hopeless crush on Jessica, her friend, but had dismissed any feelings as strictly platonic. Izzie wanted nothing more than to go back to her younger self and scream to not say anything but naively, she did.

~~~~~~~~~~~~   
Four years ago   
“Hey Mom!” a young girl whose speckled checks lifted at the sight on the middle aged asian woman.   
“Hello jie jie*, how was school?”   
“It was so good ma ma*! Classes were easy, as usual, honestly this school is child’s play. I thought you said middle school was going to be more difficult?”  
“I can’t help it if you’re smarter than everyone, baby. But what else did you do?”  
“Well, science was easy, we were going over sedimentary layers, english was pretty fun because we did this super cool writing exercise. And during lunch Jessie kissed me on the cheek, which was new but it made me feel like butterflies were in my stomach. Why is that? Oh! Mrs. Reynolds wants to know if you can chaperone for the Winter dance in January!”  
Izzie’s mom was silent, contemplating every last word that her oldest daughter had just said.  
“Who kissed you?”  
“My friend, Jessie. You know Jessica, mom. She came over to the house for a sleepover just last week.”  
“Do not mention this to your ba ba*. Do you understand?” The seriousness of her mother’s tone made her stop for a moment.   
“Why? It was just a ki-”  
“DO you understand?” Her mother’s voice held the weight of a thousand secrets and the severity of her demand.  
“Yes, ma ma.” Izzie decided to be quiet from then on, not trusting to go any further with the events of her day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~   
After that day, Izzie didn’t speak of her friend kissing her to her mother and especially not her father, but she assumes that her mother talked to her dad about it. This is because, a week after telling her mom, her father raged at her, screaming about whether or not she liked girls. Izzie denied them to the core of her being, not realizing that she even could like girls.   
Yet, once her father berated her for even thinking about liking girls, she couldn’t help but keep thinking about it. Whenever she was at school, she couldn’t stop looking at her friends in a different light. She noticed more, understood more. Jessica was her best friend and she couldn’t help but watching her golden tresses shine in the light as it was flipped over her shoulder. Izzie kept noticing how the green of Jessica’s eyes has always been her favorite.   
The young girl then remembered, all the times she would just watch Jessie, try to make her laugh because it was her favorite sound in the world, or make her small gifts that Izzie knew would make those green eyes gleam with love.  
After almost a month of pondering everything that was happening, Izzie realized that she like liked her best friend, that she liked her just as much as she like Bryan Henderson last year. The young preteen panicked, and went to the one person she felt like she could trust. Her mom.

Before the semester was over, her father had left. Izzie’s mother threw him out once she realized that he was hitting her daughter whenever she wasn’t around. He would scream profanities at her, telling her she was an aberration, a sin, and that no one would ever love her. The, now single, mother realized that discussing her fears with of how to confront Izzie’s bisexuality with him was one of the worst mistakes she ever made.  
Another of those mistakes was believing that he would leave peacefully.  
She was thrown down the stairs, next to the boxes of his clothing and belongings that she had left. Izzie’s mother knew that the kids were at school and that she could never let them see her like this, see their father like this. So, she called 911 and told the kids that something happened to her at work and that they needed to go to their aunt’s house for the couple of days that she was at the hospital.   
The morphine that the hospital prescribed during her stay was exactly the escape she needed.   
When she was high she wasn’t thinking of the husband who beat her and her daughter, when she was high she didn’t need to think about her daughter’s sexuality, when she was high she wasn’t thinking of providing for her family.  
~~~~~~~~~~~~   
Izzie was used to the responsibility of being her family’s caretaker. The captain was used to feeding and cleaning her three year old brother, making sure her 8 year old sister went to school and did her homework, and she was used to making sure her 13 year old sibling was safe from bullies. Izzie did this all, without complaint, because she knew that if she didn’t then they would suffer and she loved them more than anything to let something happen to them.   
But Izzie was fucking frustrated, she was angry that her mother decided to mentally check out just like her father physically did. She despised the situation that they were now in, hated how she shouldered everything, paying overdue bills with whatever money was left over from her mother’s drug habit.  
Izzie vowed to herself, she would be nothing like her mother, she won’t rely on anyone or anything. Especially not drugs.  
But the first part of her vow was getting much more difficult to maintain, she was starting to trust someone she had only just met. A beautiful girl that she so desperately wanted to hate.  
Casey Gardner.   
Those eyes that hid almost as much as her own ensnared Izzie, pulling her out of the vanity based haze that she had found herself in after years with rich Clayton kids.   
Izzie knew she was utterly fucked even before she left to go find the vodka in Quinn’s locker.   
~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Weeks passed since the incident with Nate and she was feeling like complete shit.   
Not only was her mom’s lowlife boyfriend still hanging around but she was also missing her favorite person. She ached to be able to talk to Casey again, to hold her hand and laugh over some stupid shit some rich kid did. Izzie wanted to be able to hang out with her favorite person, to make weird food combinations, and talk about why Casey was still wrong about turtles and tortoises were the same and have Sam back her up. She needed to release. All she wanted was to talk to Casey about how her baby brother is starting to act out again because he feels uneasy in his home environment. She wanted to talk about Keela getting her period for the first time and not knowing exactly to help her with the changes happening with her body. Izzie wanted advise on how to help her Fay, her nonbinary sibling who is still being tormented at school and disrespected by teachers for using the wrong pronouns. Izzie wanted nothing more than to hold Casey close and for just a moment, feel still. She wanted to be a background character in someone else’s life, she wanted to wander and just think about the entirety of another’s experience in life being uniquely not her own.  
So when Mrs. Gardner reaches out to her and few others from the track team, she readily accepts the invitation to Casey’s birthday.  
‘She never even mentioned how soon it was coming up’ Izzie thought sadly, but she resolved right then and there. She was going to get her favorite person back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jie jie= older sister  
> ma ma= mom  
> ba ba=dad  
> so i obviously do not know what the show is identifying Izzie as, but the actress, Fivel Stewart is (according to her brother's Wiki) Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Blackfoot, Russian, and Scottish. Obviously, It could be wrong, but as I am part Chinese as well, I am deciding to play with that.
> 
>  
> 
> if ya want to yell at me in multiple formats my tumblr is @sylvanuniverses!


End file.
